Amazon plans sort center with up to 500 jobs

Amazon is opening a Chicago-area sort center, its first Illinois hub for smaller packages, where it plans to employ 250 to 500 workers.

The newest facility, to handle parcels smaller than many it moves through distribution centers in Joliet and several other local sites, has a launch scheduled for October in southwest suburban Crest Hill. It's the latest flag planted here since 2015 by the e-commerce monolith, whose projected local employment is heading toward around 8,000.

The 438,150-square-foot building in a Crest Hill industrial park has been under development since late 2015 for a previously undisclosed tenant. Amazon's identity was confirmed by Scott McMaster, the suburb's economic development and zoning manager. He said the city offered no economic incentives.

"I'll tell you . . . to have an Amazon in our community garners a lot of attention and spurs a lot of economic development," McMaster says. A public relations firm that has represented Amazon did not respond to an email request for comment.

The Crest Hill facility will include 555 parking spaces for employees, 124 truck parking spaces, and 93 truck bays, McMaster says, a requirement that a real estate broker indicates was a deal killer for other locations chasing Amazon. Seasonal employment levels that spike during the holidays require more spaces.

Ridgeline principal Peter Harmon did not immediately return a call. Joe Krusinski, senior project manager for the general contractor, Oak Brook-based Krusinski Construction, declined to provide details. "A great project, a great client—that's all I can say," he said.

Besides its expanding number of Will County locations, Amazon also has opened or is opening centers in Waukegan and downstate Edwardsville. The Joliet facility is classified as a distribution center because it doesn't ship directly to consumers, according to sales tax blog TaxJar. Amazon's other Illinois logistics locations, besides Crest Hill's, are known as fulfillment centers.

McMaster says Crest Hill's sort center would see less heavy truck traffic than a fulfillment center. UPS and FedEx vans and trucks will ferry product to consumers, he said. Amazon's nearest sort center is in Kenosha, Wis., according to TaxJar.

Crain's reported in January that Amazon's Illinois logistics-related employment would reach 7,000, not counting hundreds of employees at two smaller warehouses in the city—one on Goose Island on the North Side and the other in the South Side's Heart of Chicago neighborhood.